Badlands Journal

As usual, an excellent diagnosis of the problem from Thom Hartmann but the solution makes the dubious assumption that there are enough hens left in the house to mount a serious counter offensive against the foxes, who have been lording it about that they own the joint for decades now. A national legislative body that cannot past gun-control legislation after a massacre of first graders does fill one with confidence that it can extricate itself from the jaws of the "national security" corporate profit centers.

But we can always hope for a change of heart in Washington. On the other hand, the president seems to be playing the game of "diverting the children" by increasing even the visitible operations of the US in Syria.

Two senators from outstanding military-pork states, McCain (R-AZ) and Graham (R-SC) are helping matters by calling the president everything short of Another Snowden if he doesn't bomb, invade, blitz and kill 50,000 Syrians regardless of their religious preferences.

We call the press approvingly, “the first Draft of History,” but it’s a pretty lousy Draft of History that has no historical perspective whatsoever.

 The nattering nabobs of National Security have been at Ed Snowden, who leaked the material about the NSA domestic spying ("all legal, all legal the nabors say) by insult and invective. They have called his behavior traitorous and treasonous and everything else bad that they can possibly imagine.

But the worst thing they have said about Ed Snowden is that he is a high school dropout. 

A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT?

May the Millennial Diety that still rules our scrambled official psyche strike him dead, over there in Hong Kong!!

A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT!!!

It reminded one Badlands Journal editor of a topless dancer joint barker on Broadway in San Francisco who some years ago made his pitch thus: "We got six college coeds and A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT."

Perhaps Mme. Sen. Dianne Feinstein also heard that immortal barker in the local politics phase of her career, back when her hearing was a little better.

A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT!!

There is something "sinful and lewd" about a high school dropout. You just try to say the term without a sneer, every so slight, that reflects your ontempt for anyone who the lacks the formal American education and academic credentials.

Certainly no one of that class ought to have had such enormous responsibilities. A HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT, fer Chrissake!!! 

 The historical descent from Country Joe and the Fish to Morning Joe, Mika and Willie has been dizzying, to put it politely.

But, this morning at least they let Glenn Greenwald talk longer than they have any guest in the history of their show without blowhard interruptions to interpret the remarks of intelligent people down to the level of a ditto head. 

But, fortunately, Greenwald has answered the question posed by one of the greatest anti-war novels of all time, Catch-22, which asked, "Mais ou sont les Snowdens d'antan?"

Snowden returned if only to leave us with a prophesy: that without the whistleblowers so loathed by the neocon national security state crowd, America is headed straight for "turnkey tyranny."

-- blj

We were struck by the beauty and balance of William Tweed's prose about his rail trip through the San Joaquin Valley. Tweed lives  in Three Rivers, gateway to Sequoia National Park. According to Amazon.com,

William Tweed, utilizing the knowledge and skills he developed during thirty years with the National Park Service where he worked as an interpretive writer, historian, and naturalist, specializes in writing that brings together the natural and human  worlds.

His major published works include: Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks: The Story Behind the Scenery (KC Publications, 1980);

Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (Sequoia Naturalist History

Richard Blum, UC regent and former chairman of the regents, major stockholder in Tutor Perinni Corp, which won the bid to construct the first leg of the California high-speed railroad, and chair of the board of CB Richard Ellis, in charge of selling decommissioned post offices, is -- as everyone knows -- the husband of US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Feinstein remarked yesterday that the leak that in secret Verizon has turned over to the NSA information about the private communications of its American customers ought to be prosecuted because we have "a culture of leaks."

Badlands Journal editorial board

6-7-13

 Press release: For Immediate Use !!    ******* Press release: For Immediate Use!!

 6-1-13

http://www.norwaypost.no/index.php/component/content/article/78-local-shortnews/28587-record-temperatures-in-the-north

*Karasjok is two hours north of the Arctic Circle

 The West TX fertilizer-plant explosion that killed 15, injured 200, destroyed two schools, a block of apartments and many nearby single homes, somehow got lost between the Boston Marathon bombing and the Oklahoma tornado. We continued to follow the story because it involved a very common agricultural fertilizer, ammonium nitrate, known until the end of WWII primarily as "the principal ingredient in making explosives," according to Michael Pollan.